And that meant Path Kethona had either undergone a tremendous extinction event, or indigenous ecologies had never evolved.

Keeper drew my attention back to the nearest ship. “Still inert. Likely safe to approach and board.”

The ship’s surface bore a haze of micrometeor scratches, like sand-tumbled quartz. The erosion had blasted away centimeters in some locations, giving relatively useless insight into the dusty sweeps of comets through which the ships had passed again and again.

Old things wear down.

“There’s a possible seamless hatchway forward of the drive nodes,” Keeper said. “Observe the deeper strike grooves. Hatches probably served as rescue ports and may not have been as hardened as the rest of the hull.”

Audacity outlined a proposed point of entry.

“Send out monitors,” I instructed.

“Should we withdraw while they work?” Dawn asked.

“No need,” Keeper said. “Any effective trap would set up a perimeter throughout the system.”

I agreed that such caution was impractical under the circumstances. We were committed to our plan. A group of ten monitors left Audacity and slowly approached the ancient craft. At any sign of revival, the monitors would back off and attempt to return—or, if danger presented itself, act as decoys while we made our retreat.

Two of the monitors extended manipulators. The first manipulator lightly brushed the craft’s worn surface.

“No response,” Audacity announced.

Within the flotilla, and throughout the ancient fleet, no ship, large or small, showed the slightest reaction.

For machines, ten million years is a very long time. But ten million years is just a brief trek for a living planet. And so even as our monitors opened the vessel, I turned my thoughts toward the small orange star and its single living planet.

That was where we would find answers.

String 9

STRING 9

UR-DIDACT

TEN CENTURIES I spent in meditative solitude, while the Lifeshaper completed her duties for the Council—and for the Master Builder—and arranged her own biological traps and releases. Very clever, my wife. I miss her deeply. She was ever my balance and my goad—ever my conscience. But despite her cleverest efforts, providing me with a fast ship, loyal ancillas, and a mixed bag of comrades, she could not prevent my ultimate capture.

Strange that recounting all this brings back my time in the Cryptum, so close to the Domain … Memories that until now I had thought lost. Or discarded. I have never been prone to either solitude or meditation. Up until now, I could barely remember the state I had lain in for so long. Yet watching as our near-derelict hulk was drawn deeper and deeper into the writhing nest of star roads, with Catalog close by but silent, there was little to do but remember, to stew in my own juices, as Forthencho, my greatest human adversary, had so aptly described his own capture and imprisonment. Before a Composer brutally sucked away his patterns and memories.

“It is invigorating,” Catalog said.

“What is?” I asked.